Officials discuss street maintenance sales tax at intergovernmental luncheon
City manager says the proposed half-cent sales tax will help the city reconstruct the over 20% of roadways in poor condition.
Officials from the Riley County Commission, USD 383, Fort Riley, the Riley County Police Department and the City of Manhattan, among others, discussed a proposed street maintenance sales tax at an intergovernmental luncheon Sept. 28.
The metric for rating streets is the pavement condition index. City Manager Danielle Dulin said it helps the city assess and track the condition of the roads, and that a score of 70 is the goal.
“We want all of our streets in the city of Manhattan, or our average, to be 70,” Dulin said. “Right now, our average is about 60, 61 on the PCI.”
Streets that score from 0-40 are called backlog streets and require full reconstruction. Dulin said roughly 20% of streets fall into this category, with conditions worsening in neighborhoods.
“One out of every five streets are in that backlog category or in need of that full reconstruction,” Dulin said. “60% of our neighborhood streets are in this category. So that's one of the challenges that we have.”
From 2016 to 2026, the percentage of blacklog streets has risen from 14% to 18%. Dulin said "unprecedented inflation and a lack of funding” caused the increase.
“Since 2020, we've seen an increase in asphalt, concrete and particularly this labor market of about 7%,” she said. “So we have seen nearly a 30% increase in this area since 2020. We were also already behind the eight ball with the dollars that we were bringing in.”
In 2016, $4 million to $5 million annually was needed to main all roadways with an average PCI score of 70. With the current 0.2% sales tax $3 million annually were spent on road repair. Today, the number has jumped to $8 million needed annually for the same result.
“That's exactly what a half-cent will generate for us in one year, so we're looking at $80 million going into our street maintenance program over the next 10 years,” Dulin said.
With the $2 million general fund, the city commission will be committing approximately $10 million annually to street maintenance and repair, with 75% of the budget going to neighborhood roads.
If the half-cent sales tax gets voted in on Nov. 3, the county's new sales tax rate would be 9.45% starting April 1, 2027. The current 0.2% sales tax sunsets Dec. 31.
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